The present invention relates to a method, program and device for displaying a menu containing a plurality of menu items.
Electronic devices and information terminals of today generally have a large number of functions and a display screen capable of displaying a menu containing a plurality of menu items representing various functions, etc. Such menu items are arranged on the menu in hierarchical structure, for example. By configuring the menu in hierarchical structure such as tree structure, the number of operations (pressing a scroll key, etc.) for scrolling the menu screen can be reduced and a work area, etc. can easily be reserved on the screen. However, in order to find a desired menu item in such a menu in hierarchical structure, the user has to successively select and refer to a lot of menu levels properly from the top level to lower levels. Such a search is difficult and troublesome to users who are unfamiliar with the hierarchical structure of the particular menu.
Various three-dimensional menu displaying devices/methods, displaying a menu containing a plurality of menu items in a three-dimensional arrangement, have been proposed in order to resolve the above problem and such methods are widely known (see Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. HEI07-114451 (hereinafter referred to as a “patent document #1”), for example). By displaying a menu in such a three-dimensional arrangement, a large number of menu items can be displayed on the menu screen at once, by which the user is relieved of the troublesome task of the hierarchical search, etc. and is also allowed to grasp correlations among the menu items (e.g. positional relationship among the menu items) with ease.
However, the three-dimensional menu displaying devices, like the one disclosed in the patent document #1, are only capable of displaying half the menu items (half the surfaces) of the whole menu on the menu screen. For example, in cases where the menu is formed in a cubic shape having six surfaces, only menu items on three surfaces of the cube can be displayed at once. Such three-dimensional menu displaying devices, involving the intrinsic restriction on the number of displayed menu items, are insufficient for meeting the users' needs and requirements.
Further, in the technique of the patent document #1, top and side surfaces of the cubic menu (which are viewable on the menu screen together with the front surface of the cubic menu) are placed substantially parallel to a Z direction orthogonal to the menu screen (X-Y plane) or at slight angles from the Z direction, by which each menu item on the top or side surface is shown in an extremely distorted state and in a very small size, resulting in extremely low viewability of the menu items on the top or side surface. By arranging such menu items in parallel with the X-Y plane (menu screen) in two-dimensional arrangement in order to increase their viewability, the distortion can be eliminated and the display size can be increased. However, the number of displayed menu items is restricted further in this arrangement.